


Crosswords and Clue Bats

by ChuckleVoodoos



Series: Invisible Gorilla Testing [4]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Denial Ain't Just A River, F/M, Love Triangles, M/M, Oblivious Bruce, POV Bruce Banner, Smacked With A Clue Bat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 17:35:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChuckleVoodoos/pseuds/ChuckleVoodoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, one of those really tricky ones where every piece is a separate little picture. Bruce may not know what the final picture is going to look like yet, but he just knows that it’s going to be beautiful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crosswords and Clue Bats

**Author's Note:**

> Not my favorite addition, but after this is the finale, which should be fun. Yay for Bruce POV!

Bruce Banner loves puzzles. By the time he has finished them, he has learned their every line and corner and they feel like old friends. He’s done all kinds, from crosswords to Sudoku and everything in between, and sometimes he can’t help but think of people in terms of the puzzles that he loves to solve.

 

Betty is, he thinks, a bit like a Rubik’s cube. Bruce has known her since they were small, and he knows her better than he knows himself sometimes. Just like the Rubik’s Cube that Bruce can now solve in less than six seconds, Betty is comforting and fun and full of lively color, and they fit together amazingly well.

 

Tony Stark, on the other hand, is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle, one of those really tricky ones where every piece is a separate little picture. Every day he learns something new about his friend and puts it in the puzzle, but he still has a long way to go. Some of the pieces don’t fit quite right, and he still has no idea what the final picture is going to look like. It’s taxing and trying at times, and exhilarating and wonderful at others when he finds a piece that clicks just right and Tony smiles at him. It’s never boring.

 

Bruce may not know what the final picture is going to look like yet, but he just knows that it’s going to be beautiful.

* * *

Bruce Banner doesn’t know what to think of Tony Stark, not at first. The other boy is both abrasive and charming, endearing and maddening, and he is the only other person Bruce has ever met that has constructed their own atomic theory. So he doesn’t know what to think about the paradox that is Tony at first, but he knows from the moment that he meets him that he _wants_ to know.

 

Things just start falling into place, after that. Like puzzle pieces clicking together. Sometimes they seem to contradict each other at first, but in the end they settle together so well you can't even see the seams.

 

Tony is kind—Tony can be _unkind_ —Tony has trouble apologizing for being unkind, even when he wants to. Click.

 

Tony loves his father—Tony hates his father—It’s complicated. Bruce can relate. Click.

 

Tony is brilliant—Tony knows he’s brilliant—Tony likes to make sure everyone _else_ knows he’s brilliant. Bruce just reminds him that his latest ‘brilliant’ experiment is burning, genius, and asks if he can pass the methylene blue. This particular exchange occurs more than once, as sad as it is to say. Bruce uses Wright’s stain a lot and Tony sets a lot of things on fire. Click.

 

Tony likes brownies (Betty does not)—Tony does not like sugar cookies (Betty does)—Bruce must do a lot of baking to keep the peace, but he doesn’t mind. He likes them both just fine. Click.

 

Tony is the most popular boy in school—Bruce is arguably the least popular boy in school—Tony prefers to spend his time with Bruce than with other popular kids. Which makes no sense at all, but Tony seems to like it this way and Bruce sure isn’t going to complain any time soon. Click.

 

Bruce is Tony’s best friend, he thinks—Tony is Bruce’s best friend, he knows—he really does love his best friend like a brother. Except that’s one of those pieces that doesn’t fit quite right, so he puts it aside to come back to later.

 

The picture is coming together. Click. Click. Click.

 

He’s a little worried he’s going to do something to screw this up, sometimes, because Betty is his only other very close friend and he’s pretty sure there are things you do with your girlfriend that you don’t do with your best (male) friend, and vice versa. But Betty and Tony seem to act relatively similar towards him as far as physical affection—minus things at and above kissing level, of course—so maybe the difference isn’t as big as he thinks.

 

The puzzle piece doesn’t fit quite right here either.

 

And sometimes Betty jokes that Bruce has a boyfriend on the side, and Tony sometimes refers to Betty as the ‘other woman’. For some reason this sort of rankles, and he’s not quite sure why. Tony is just a friend, a very, very straight friend if the lipstick gallery decorating his skin and shirt is to be believed. And Betty knows that Bruce would never cheat on her, ever. So it is just a joke, but for some reason it makes a small tight ball of unease unfurl in his stomach, especially when they make the comments to each other in front of him. It can be very difficult to get them to stop. They must think it’s very funny, although nobody laughs very much.

 

Sometimes Bruce can’t seem to stop thinking about it even after they have stopped.

 

Yes, okay, so Tony is the one that Bruce calls with news, and he’s the one he called when he needed somewhere to hide from his father, and they spend a great deal of their free time together. Why not? They work better together, and even Betty needs a break from Bruce’s babbling about science sometimes, as wonderful and patient as she is. Tony never seems to mind. And maybe they touch a little more than other male friends do, but Tony is a very tactile person and Bruce likes the feeling of knowing that he can touch someone else without flinching or overthinking it. And if he tells Tony a few things that he doesn’t tell Betty, it’s just because there are some things that you don’t talk to your girlfriend about.

 

And besides, Tony is straight and Bruce loves Betty. He really does. Only she seems a little tense lately and seems to want her space, so he starts spending more and more time with Tony. Neither comments on this new schedule, although one of the thirty-odd guest rooms at Stark Manor starts to become ‘Bruce’s room’, even though a great majority of the time he and Tony talk or work the night away and end up falling asleep together on the couch (which is still nicer than Bruce’s bed at home).

 

So yes, they're close. But there’s nothing like what Betty and Tony jest about, because Tony is straight and Bruce loves Betty. And anything different wouldn’t fit right. It really wouldn’t. Bruce would know. The puzzle pieces won’t fit quite right as it is, but he keeps on pushing anyway because he knows that he’s more right than they are, and one day the puzzle will know too.

 

Tony is Bruce’s first new friend since kindergarten. He’s just a little invested. And he really doesn’t think that it’s anything more than that, for the next three years. And then he gets into college. College always ruins everything.

 

* * *

 

He has just received his college admissions letter. He sits at Tony’s banquet-sized kitchen table and watches at the other boy slices the envelope open with a butter knife.

 

“Stop vibrating, Banner.” Tony mutters. “And remind me to hide the coffee.”

 

He pulls out the sheaf of paper and scans the top one. For a moment his eyes shutter and his mouth thins, and Bruce feels his heart drop into his stomach, but then Tony grins brightly like nothing just happened and offers the paper with a flourish.

 

“Congratulations, Mr. Banner, on your acceptance into the most esteemed Culver University.” He says in a mock-posh tone (funny considering that he actually is insanely posh), bowing to Bruce. Then he says, in a rare show of seriousness, “Betty will be thrilled.”

 

Bruce nods, because he knows she will. Betty has already been accepted to Culver, early acceptance, into their Honors Biology track. She has told him multiple times about their fantastic Physics department with no small amount of emphasis, and they do have a great program, but…

 

He holds out the other letter. Tony blinks down at it, and once he reads the return address printed neatly on the envelope he accepts it with unsteady fingers.

 

“Bruce…This is for MIT.” Tony’s school. “You didn’t say… Does Betty…” He trails off.  His earlier grin has fallen from his face, and now he looks extremely discomfited. It is a rare look on him.

 

“I haven’t told her yet. I still haven’t decided—it might not even matter. Open it?” He looks down at the table, feeling unaccountably awkward as well.

 

The truth is, he doesn’t know why he hasn’t told Betty about his MIT application. He can say that he didn’t want to get his hopes up by spreading the news around, but he knows that she’d support him no matter what the letter says. It’s just that sometimes, especially after his and Betty’s tenth anniversary, he’s come to feel like there’s something unspoken between his two best friends. At first he’d worried that they might have been… but he trusts Betty, and he trusts Tony, and as the tension has risen he has come to realize that it is anything but sexual.

 

He’s not sure why his best friends hate each other. It’s a puzzle piece that he can’t get to fit, no matter which way he turns it. He just knows that somehow they do now, even though they’ve never said an unkind word to each other, and he is terrified of doing something that will widen the rift beyond repair.

 

For a moment there is silence, and then there is the careful tearing of paper and Tony inhales sharply. 

 

Bruce tells himself that Culver is a good school for science too, that it doesn’t matter. MIT may have a better department, but it’s not the only option. Applying was a whim; he wasn’t expecting anything. And even if…He was going to choose Culver anyway, he _was._

“You got in. Bruce, you—you got in!” Bruce is swept up into one of those hugs that Tony loves, the bone-crushing ones where Bruce’s feet leave the ground and the world spins around them as they twirl. “I knew you would! I knew it!”

 

He’d laughing, he realizes, and he doesn’t stop until his feet touch back to the wood. He got in. He hadn’t thought—but he got in.

 

He grins dopily up at Tony, cheeks warm with laughter, and Tony smiles right back in that manic, brilliant way he does. And then he leans in and kisses Bruce.

 

Which sort of ruins the moment, just a little.

 

For a bizarre moment all Bruce can think is that he should get Tony some chap stick before they do this again, because his lips are a little dry. Then he thinks that this is only a small problem in the long run, because Tony’s lips are also very warm and very good at what they are doing.

 

Then he realizes that these are _Tony’s lips_ he is rating categorically and he pulls back. 

“Uh…” He stares at Tony, who looks sort of like he did when they found out that Pluto wasn’t classified as a planet anymore—sort of stunned, sad, and stricken all at once. Bruce is not sure that he looks much better.

 

Neither one has let go of the other. At least on Bruce’s end, he thinks Tony’s arms are the only things holding him up.

 

That was most definitely not a friendly kiss.

 

“Tony, what—“

 

“I am so sorry.” Tony stumbles back, the MIT acceptance letter dropping to the floor. “I…” His hand flies up and covers his mouth as though he is afraid it will act without his permission. Bruce’s own mouth feels fizzy, like it’s buzzing with static electricity. He absently tries to lick the sensation away. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it until Tony zeroes in on the motion and makes a strangled sound.  “I’m so sorry.” He says again, through his fingers.

 

This is not actually the part that makes Bruce angry. He is confused, and a little dazed, but not angry. That comes a few seconds later when Tony actually _runs away_. And takes the car. Leaving a stupefied Bruce standing alone in his house with two college acceptance letters, a head full of unanswered questions, and _no way home._

He immediately calls Tony’s cell, only to hear “Science Genius Girl” ringing cheerfully from somewhere in the next room.

 

Fucking bastard did a kiss-and-run.

 

And Bruce sort of liked it.

 

_Click._

 

Oh.


End file.
